The Times also profiles the record industry and its efforts to adapt to a changing environment. Of course, tha article also points out “But if record executives are singing a kinder, gentler tune, it is because, in effect, they have no choice.”

Slashdot discussesBandlink, a technology that purports to allow your computer to report on your CD playing if you listen using a machine on the network.

So digital technology may ultimately mean bands have to make their money the old-fashioned way — by touring, selling out concerts, constantly writing new music, and ignoring the undercurrent of their older music being free. To those readers who decried my emphasis on rock music examples over classical or jazz, those two genres are already living in the future where musicians survive by performance rather than because they have a recording contract. If they had to rely solely on record sales, Branford Marsalis and Yo-Yo Ma would starve.

My wedding anniversary – and one of the "real" ones, in that it really also falls on a Friday this year!

End of term crunch, combined with other deadlines, has made this a busy week for me, with less than adequate time to keep up with goings-on in this area. (Interesting to note that, in spite of having left my formal student status behind almost 2 decades ago, my crunch-time calendar still matches that of the academic cycle).

Anyway, one of my recent delights was grading (*finally*) the short papers I assigned to ESD.10 on the block I taught this year on copyright and the impacts of P2P upon the policy issues arising from its development. The paper asked the students to cite examples of "architecture" (a la Lessig’s Code) and, as is so often the case with TPP students, I got to learn some new things – my favorite was a description of the fact that many public rest rooms in Europe have special lighting installed whose color is shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum. Why? Because it’s hard to see your veins, thus making it hard to inject drugs.

Larry’s taking his e-Book discussion on the road – written up in CIO Magazine and commented upon on Slashdot – an Eldred recap, with a strong overtone of the implicit risks of marrying copyright to technological alienation.

Of course, the Elcomsoft case is underway; and I missed a NYTimes article on Ed Felten’s Fritz list. And it seems to be a big day in DVD piracy discussions – plus, Wired covers a Danish comany with some serious brass!

ZDNet UK is reporting that a Microsoft representative has stted that Palladium is going to be Microsoft’s proposed infrastructure for the next TCPA – v1.2. Up until now, it was assumed that Palladium was just a software infrastructure that would make use of TCPA hardware – if true, this changes the complexion of the Palladium debate completely. I would like to think the idea of a closed hardware architecture would be rejected by the same people who eschew Apples in spite of their acknowledged advantages in other respects, but it’s dangerous to predict mob behavior.

The author of a GrepLaw piece on lagom copyright got his story accepted on Slashdot. Although it is accompanied by the usual troll vitriol, there are some worthwhile comments there – a little more traffic there than GrepLaw.

Salon adds to our consideration of the costs of distribution in the non-digital work with this article on the costs of books, to go along with considerations of the costs of CDs.

My brother points out that, even though I mentioned this article in my November 29 entry, I failed to note that Furdlog is also mentioned in it – the perils of trying to stay on top of things using a microweight VAIO without having my reading glasses with me!